Salt rusts and corrodes motor vehicles and other high-way vehicles, and salt is hard to combat. For example, painted surfaces of automobiles may regularly be washed, but the undersurfaces are usually not washed, although most people known that salt water splashes up and collects and rusts body parts from the inside.
Washing the underside of a typical automobile requires some way to get at it, either a hoist or a pit, or other special facility such as a commercial carwash of the type that will wash the underside. Few owners want to lie on the ground and try to reach under a vehicle.
The dollar cost of rustout caused by salt on vehicle undersurfaces is immense, possibly a chief cause of early discard of vehicles, in climatic areas requiring road salting. By the time rust has eaten through at one small spot on the outside so that it is visible, it has usually thinned-out large adjacent areas, making repairs difficult.
A principal object of this invention is to provide a wheeled-spray system for under-car washing that is sufficiently convenient and low priced to find acceptance among vehicle owners leading to savings of large amounts of money across the Nation.
Various spray systems have been suggested in the prior art, including the following in U.S. patents:
U.S. Pat. No. 1,724,702 to B. N. Flickinger, 8-13-29, disclosed a two-wheel device with two up-spray nozzles at the wheeled end, fed by a pipelike handle with a hose attached for fluid supply and a valve. Although this is not for under-body washing of a motor vehicle, evidently it could be so-used and the structure is generally similar;
U.S. Pat. No. 2,712,960 to E. G. Grubb, Jr., 7-12-58, shows another form of up-spraying wheeled device with pipe-like handle, hose connection and valve;
U.S. Pat. No. 2,761,732 to F. B. Anthon, 9-4-56 disclosed another form of the type device, with a soap container from connection to the fluid supply pipe; also note upstanding portion 31 which could be a guard;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,083,495 to R. L. Sharp, 4-11-78, represents a number of caster-equipped spray cleaning devices of the type, all spraying down or ahead.
However, it is believed that none of these devices has provided the advantages necessary to make it widely available and widely in demand as the standard of commerce for the purpose, and to provide such is a principal object of this invention.